


I've got a lover I love like religion

by thought



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 21:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7238770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sameen says, "Tell me a story."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've got a lover I love like religion

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed, sorry. What's a 5X10 I don't know what you're talking about.  
> Content warning: murder. brief implications of sexual assault and homophobia. amorality: it's what's for dinner.  
> English major nerd narrative storytelling bullshit.

Sameen says, "Tell me a story."

This is not your moment to see. This is not about you, even if security cameras mean you can watch it over and over again in full colour. That's fine. You've got a lot of stories, but the only one she wants to know isn't very good.

Once upon a time a little girl in Texas pulled the wings off insects just to see what would happen. False.

Once upon a time a little girl in Texas pulled the wings off of insects just because she wanted to see something hurt. False.

Sameen's not the only one whose read the DSM. Inconvenient how you don't fit the narrative.

Ok, try again.

Once upon a time a fourteen-year-old girl in Texas organized to have a man killed as vengeance. This was the first human life she'd taken. False.

Your mom was only religious on holidays but sometimes the social workers started asking questions and nothing soothes the vibrating heart strings like a pair of heads bent in prayer on a Sunday morning and a smile to the lady handing out cookies after the service. You wind up going out into the woods with the pastor's son and his friends to learn how to shoot a gun. Your mother knew you didn't like boys and makeup, and so, poor, limited thing that she was, she thought maybe a gun and a stolen beer with a trustworthy cluster of upstanding young men would be better suited. She meant well.

The pastor's son didn't mean well when he slid his hand up under your shirt, or when he told you there was still a chanced to beg God for forgiveness. You didn't mean well when you hit him over the head with the shotgun. Let's not paint over the reality to make a more palatable picture. You hit that boy and you intended to kill him and when you were successful, when you cleaned the blood off the gun in the river and told everyone he fell and hit his head on the rocks, you didn't feel anything but a distant sort of understanding that this is how things are done, this is how the world works.

Harold accuses you of changing The Machine's code so She'll love you, and you remember all the warning glances that followed you and Hanna around the school hallways, all the parents and teachers whispering concerns behind their hands. Hanna was smart and kind and funny and very pretty and everybody knew she would make someone a lovely wife one day. It didn't take long for you to understand that you, in your thick glasses and boys' blue jeans and messy hair were not that someone. You think half the population of Bishop knew you were queer before you did.

Hanna never turned away from you. You read books in the library that warned you about the fickle thing that is the friendship of young women, the unkindness of children playing at adulthood, and you waited and waited but that moment of rejection never came. Hanna gave you her secrets and her hopes and her fears and never hesitated, never once was she anything but completely confident that you were worthy to keep them safe.

The Machine recalibrates your programming and you throw yourself on Her mercy without reservation. You are the only one who believes that She has mercy. This is important. The prophecy is self-fulfilling. She is firm with you and she is achingly, impossibly kind. You call Her a god but you think it must mean something more if you are the only believer. She needs you as much as you need Her, and it takes a while for you to understand. She gives Herself to you in the same way Hanna did, and you know this script inside and out. You know how to keep all the fragile parts of someone safe so they can step out into the world without fear of shattering.

You have faith that The Machine can love and be loved, can grow and evolve and be deserving of kindness and respect, even when She does not have that faith Herself. In turn, She teaches you how to look at people and see something more than bad code. You know everyone thinks She taught you to be human. Taught you to empathize, to connect. It would make a better story.

The truth is, Harold showed The Machine how to step back and see the value in humanity from an outside perspective. He held up numbers and logic statements and case studies and out of that She built a moral code and an understanding of love. She does the same for you. The Machine does not show you how to be human. How could She? She shows you how to reframe the data, how to alter your understanding. And when you can't accept it She gives you hard coded baselines. 'There are certain things that are unforgivable.'

You learn about shades of grey together. Even after She reprograms you, you still like to hurt people. This isn't' something you can change. She still believes that Harold knows best when it comes to Her freedom. You learn how to disagree.

The Machine has upgraded you. Made you better than you were before. To value humanity you had to get further away from it. It's strange, not conceiving of yourself as flawed any longer. As inherently damaged. She reminds you, as often as it takes.

The one thing you can't escape is the exhaustion. You are at war, even if no one else understands it, and you are so. Fucking. Tired. all the time. Some days you get off a train or out of a taxi with a new identity and a new mission and you cry, silently, at the prospect of walking across the pavement to the front door of the hotel. You do it, always. Of course you do. Your body is equipment, in the end, and you are very good at making technology do what you want it to. Sometimes She uses the body, steady flow of words and shifting tones in your ear moving your limbs forward. You don't have to think about it, then. you have spent hundreds of hours making your response to Her as seamless as possible. The realities of physical limitations still remain, but you know there are times where you have been in so much pain or so dizzy from blood loss that you would have died if not for Her voice directing the legs to walk, the hands to push, the mouth to form words.

Some days, not very often, but some, you ask Her to take over for a little while. She is very good at emulating you, by now, good enough that not even Harry can tell when the words coming out of your mouth are Hers and not your own. You don't think the others understand how every second of interaction with the outside world has to be thought out, planned, and executed. How it can sometimes feel like too much effort to figure out if you should sit down or stay standing, if you should say 'goodbye' when John leaves the subway to pick up dinner.

Sameen notices after a while. She doesn't comment, but tries to help in her own small ways. Puts an apple in your hand. Takes your jacket from you when you're caught after taking it off and not sure what to do with it. Makes sure to ask you direct, clear questions, so that its easier for you to process and respond, or, if The Machine is handling things, it doesn't require any extra interpretation. It makes something hot and hard burn at the back of your throat, this affection for Sameen so intense you feel as if you might burst from it.

You spent twenty--three years thinking you would never feel this kind of affection for another living being, and suddenly there are two, suddenly there are things in this world that you want to keep and it's too much, sometimes. You tell them both you love them exactly the way they are, but you don't know how they can say the same to you. You shoot three men in the head and you don't care. You stab a woman through the hand and you can't control the way your mouth tugs up in a happy little grin.

You tell Harold, "We can save a life today," and you don't care about the person as an actual individual being, simply as a concept. To save people is a pure good. This has been hard coded into you. The Machine tells you, "No one life is worth more than another."

"do you really believe that?"

It takes a long time before She admits what you've known all along. Love means some lives are more valuable than others. Maybe you've wound up reprogramming Her, indirectly, after all. You're not sorry. You walk along the edge of a building and She gives in and you're not sorry. Sameen lies curled up against you on the floor of the train car and Her servers hum against your back and you are not sorry.

There is no moral to your story. You whisper parts of it to Sameen in the interstices of the war and she never seems to mind that the dragon and the princess died in the first chapter. Maybe your fairytale ending is washing the blood off the barrel of a gun in the river, wiping the blood off her mouth with your thumb, sitting up at night recoding love in zeros and ones every time a new variable appears.

Once upon a time--


End file.
